or I’m trying to anyway.

I decided to un-wuss yesterday & weighed myself shortly after posting my long diatribe about why I was going to wait til today to weigh myself…blah, blah, blah. & we have movement on the clicker that puts me about a third of the way towards my first weight goal. So that’s about 2.1 pounds per week that I can pretty much attribute to two things: my metabolism is functioning again & the W8 has me motivated not to skip a day of exercise. Now to make sure I lose 2.1 next week when I get back from MA.

Yesterday I walked only 30 minutes around campus. But I had a ton of errands to run, got only 2.5 hours of sleep the night before, and was pretty beat up from the road trip on Monday, so I think a day off was called for. I’m moving things along early today so I can get to the airport an hour & 1/2 before my flight & walk that gloriously long Northwest terminal.

I’m also probably going to end up with very light posting this week since mom has no internet. We’re a little nervous that the bank isn’t ready to close on the house she’s buying on Friday, but if all goes according to plans, this will be a week of cleaning & unpacking & heavy-lifting. I plan to walk every day as well & since all mom’s kitchen stuff is packed up, it should be easy to resist the temptation of home cooking.

Food today:
Breakfast: same as yesterday, a stop at the market for a coffee & a nectarine
Snack: dried fruit & nut mix
Lunch: unless I find something packable at the market, this will be a late lunch, but I’m hoping mom has salad mixings
Dinner: my nephew wants to take me to his favorite pizza place. Restraint, salad, & one slice.

Water…I’m upping my intake for the day to 5 pints cause of the dry flight & all the temptations along the way.

Plan: I’m going to keep tracking my food/exercise in a journal & post it all here whenever I get within spittin’ distance of WiFi.

Exercise: one-hour walk at the airport…in fact, I think I’ll pack an extra shirt in my carry on in case it’s a sweaty walk.

The chicken sammie was probably a mistake, but Quiznos was next to Starbucks, so it seemed like the perfect non-McDs stop. & I really should’ve asked for no bacon or cheese, but I was all focused on just-saying-no to the chips & cookies. Although I didn’t exactly say no to the M & Ms, now did I? Argh, so many excuses & the truth is I could taste the overload of salt on the sammie, so now I’m worried about today’s step on the scale & thinking of saving it til tomorrow after I’ve had a chance to walk/sweat off some of the water I’m sure I’m retaining.

Okay, that’s silly. It’s only been 22 days since I last stepped on the scale, so I can’t expect big numbers anyway & it’s only about 7 weeks since I couldn’t fit into my fattest pants even…so I know there’s been some progress. I’m just terrified to find out how much or how little progress much right before I head home to the land of fried clams, clam chowder, & mom’s cooking. Okay, I’ve decided. I’ll step on the scale first thing tomorrow & post the news here before I leave for the airport. That’ll be 23 days since my last weigh in.

Today’s food:
Breakfast: a mystery in a house that hasn’t been occupied for weeks. I guess I’ll stop off at the local market for coffee & a piece of fruit. Save my calories for lunch
Lunch: cup of beer cheese soup & a side salad at the brew pub. I figure if I hit there for lunch, I won’t get a beer, but I will get my pub fix.
Dinner: leftover Thai apple salad & chicken curry

Long story (for me anyway), but there’s a happy ending along the way that I thought I’d write about today. Although I intend for this to be a story with many happy endings!

Getting ready to come up to the UP for the summer (so back in early May), I tried on my summer clothes from last year & realized they were much, much, much too tight. With some, I couldn’t even get close to zipping them up. Horror!

I’d been wearing the same 2 pair of jeans for months, & I do own a scale, so this shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was. An unhappy surprise. At first, I refused to buy any pants or summer capris in the next size up (thus my attachment to those 2 pair of jeans that were stretched to the point where it could’ve qualified as a miracle). But I gave in & stopped at the eddiebauer outlet on the way up here & tried on some the next size up. & they DIDN’T fit. They were so tight as to be obscene. But I bought them anyway cause there was no way in hell I was going up two sizes!

Fine. I resolved myself to a couple of more weeks in the miraculous (but tired, tight, uncomfortable, and boring) jeans. Eventually (maybe early June) the new (bigger) capris fit. Today they are baggy in a very satisfying sort of way.

In fact, they’re so baggy that I just tried on last year’s summer clothes in anticipation of packing for my trip to see my mom in MA. They fit! They fit a little snug, but not in an obscene way. In fact, since they all loosen up after about an hour of wear, I’m packing them & wearing them & happy, happy, happy to have reached the first milestone on this gawdforsaken journey.

Okay, I’m off for a 9 1/2 hour road trip back to Detroit. My flight leaves for MA Wednesday at 10 & I’ll only be able to post periodically for the next week since mom doesn’t have internet service.

Tomorrow morning I’ll step on the scale for the first time in almost a month. I hope it shows progress. I’m nervous. Traveling is going to present a huge break in my routine (and I’ll be gone for 3 weeks in all) & a huge challenge. I’ll be crushed if the scale doesn’t show progress. I’m worried it’ll send me into a tailspin. But I need to keep myself grounded & focused here: the smaller pants fit, which is the only sign of progress I should want or need. Right?

I’ve been a part of the W8 Challenge for a little over a month now & I figured I’d write a little bit about why I’m enjoying (& getting a lot out of) the challenge. Note: I’m not a paid endorser, just a happy user.

So the W8 is simple & free. You pick your daily food goals for the month & every day that you meet those personal goals, you get a gold star. You can only get one food-goal star a day, but you can get as many gold stars for exercise as you can manage.

For the exercise stars, you do what you normally consider exercise (for me that’s usually walking or walk/running), & you get a gold star for each hour you do that exercise every day. You can get a half star for a half hour of exercise, but there aren’t any fractions below that. This is actually one of the things I like best about the W8…if I’m at 45 minutes, there’s that incentive to keep going to round it out to a full hour.

& you’re “competing” with others in your group who are also busy earning as many stars as they can. Weird, but it works. Mostly, I’m competing with myself. I really wanted a red star this month (that’s the reward once you hit 50 gold stars), and so even though I’ll be traveling a lot this next week, I’m going to push myself to work out at least an hour a day to see if I can’t get to 50 before the end of the month.

Gold stars…not even real ones, virtual gold stars…it works for some reason.

So if you think you’re the type of person who would enjoy a little friendly competition/motivation, think about signing up to be a part of the challenge in July! It’s fun & it’s already motivated me to do 20 and a half hours of exercise this month…not too shabby, I think.

Exercise: 1.5 hour walk with the dog. 55-mins weeding the front garden & planting the last of the flowers. So, yeah, you better believe I dragged my poor tired knees & poor tired dog out for a 10-minute walk to round out the hour. Still have to finish the laundry & pack the car (these I don’t count for stars cause it’s not like a sustained activity). I’d like to get the car packed up tonight (books & files I’ll need on the research leg of the trip in July) so I can take a walk along the portage before I hit the road tomorrow morning.

Still working on my last pint of water & then I can record these glorious stars!

First, thanks to Sunny & brseay for the timely responses to my swollen hands question. Your answers encouraged me to look online (rather than assuming it was a thyroid thing), & apparently this is fairly common. Although mostly for marathon runners/walkers, which I am so not! But the humidity & heat may have been the culprit. The sweat was (okay, gross alert) dropping off me like I’d been caught in a rainstorm & many of the answers to the swollen-hands questions online suggest dehydration (& low electrolytes) were the reason. It was also really comforting to know giant balloon hands weren’t that unusual.

My bloodpressure is absurdly low (doctors typically do a “is she still breathing?” test when they take mine), so I don’t think high bp is the cause…although my red, red face might tell a different story. hmmm…

& I sort of thought the heat was the culprit last night, so does this mean I can go back to eating my strawberries? I think so! I’m also going to make sure I drink more than my standard 8 oz of water in the morning if I’m planning on a run.

Exercise:after lunch, hubby needed to go to campus, so he left me at the restaurant & I walked to campus to join him…50-min walk, so I need at least another 10 mins for a full star….later: 15 minute walk with the dog, so I got my star!

Today’s goals: finish up reading this book I have to review (first read, anyway) & make edits a friend recommended for my article…doesn’t sound fun, but it’s got to be done as next week I go home to help my mom move & there’ll be little time for work then.

On the run today, my hands looked like big blobby balloons. It was actually kinda spooky. I even slowed my pace to see if I could get my rings off. Nope. This ever happen to anyone else? It’s actually going down now that the run is over, but I’m not sure the cause is running…the run just occurred at the right time for maximum swelling?

So I’ve had beets for one meal the last two days & I think beets were on my no-no list…although, the real culprit is probably the strawberries, which are bad for hypothyroid conditions. Also, the pretzels for snack last night had salt, so maybe I’m retaining the normal water for hypo & then more for salt?

Good run today…hot as hell & on my way back I ducked into one of the buildings on campus to splash water on my face & hands, took one look at my face in the mirror & thought…Beets! So completely red that if I saw someone looking like me on the trail, I’d have called an ambulance on the spot. Had to laugh cause aside from being super hot, a little tired, and swollen up like crazy, I felt pretty good.

Did the first mile with the 2 quarter mile runs & then turned on the week 2 podcast. My second day in week 2 & it went pretty okay. Decided to run it all the way out before turning around cause…frankly, I was disappointed with myself for not running yesterday & for walking only 1/2 hour. So I was determined to do 2 hours today to make up for it. Let the tape take me way out on the trail…my motivation going out is always huge, so I like to take advantage of it & get as far away from my car as possible.

Breakfast: smoothie
Lunch: watermellon & two scrambled eggs with hot sauce & a bite sized piece of smoked cheddar
Dinner: fruit salad & smoked sausage w/ polenta leftovers (& I think the swelling was the heat, so I also had a small portion of) beets

Sunny was right (funny, I haven’t known her that long, but I find myself saying that a lot): it was too early to label yesterday an “uninteresting and dull” day.

Got a little more research done for my trip to Chicago in July (I think I’ve found everything I can at this stage), read the conclusion & re-read the intro of the book I need to review (figure now I just read a chapter a day & re-read it in MA & I’ll be ready to review), did the laundry, & cleaned the front porch.

After dinner hubby wanted to go to the beach to swim (brrr…), so we picked a nice one that’s up the Keweenaw about 45 minutes. He swam while I walked. Then we went to Mount Brockway to watch the sunset, but he was freezing (the water’s really too cold for swimming, but he likes it that way), so we took a quick walk around the observation lot & headed home while the sun was still out.

On the ride up we saw a bunch of deer, which is fairly typical (and terrifying since they’re all over the roads). But as we came down Brockway, we rounded a corner & I thought, “wow, what’s that giant dog doing way out here?” Turns out, the giant dog was a black bear. We only caught a glimpse since the car scared him/her away, but s/he was beautiful!

What a wonderful way to end a pretty damn fine day.

Only now I’m sad. I’ll have to leave here on Sunday to drive back home so I can catch a flight out on Tuesday to MA to help my mom move into a new condo. Then, a week later, I’ll be back in Detroit & heading to Chicago. I’ll be gone like 3 freakin’ weeks total! This is the longest separation from hubby since he moved to Detroit last summer & I hate missing 3 weeks up here. But there’s nothing to do about it, I guess. Although…I get back from Boston around 2 on July 2nd, so if I left right from the airport, I could be back in the UP a short 10 hours later, stay until the 5th when I’d have to drive down to Chicago. I’m actually considering this…

Okay, it’s hot out there today, but there appears to be a nice breeze. I need to get running so I can get back here & get some work done. I need to get running…clearly I’m not in the mood for this today.

Or maybe it’s a busy day…not sure how I want to describe it, maybe “unexciting, uneventful, & dull” would be the best descriptors at this point. Frankly, I’m already so bored with this day, I see no need to describe it.

I need to do some reading & writing & laundry. At the moment, that’s the only plan. A walk with hubby in the evening should get me my gold star for the day, but I’m not planning for more than that at this point.

Week 2 of the C25K podcast & I was on run #3 (these are the 6 90-second runs) when it hit me…”this is hard.” Then I thought, sure, this is supposed to be hard cause, well, the 5K isn’t the problem part of the equation, the couch is. Years of sitting on the couch thinking about how much I needed to exercise is the problem. The call of the couch when I’d rather not go out & run is the problem. This is supposed to be hard, but other things are harder, so I can deal.

Okay, so what did I do? Did my first 1/4 mile warm up run & then instead of walking 1/4 mile & doing another 1/4 mile run, I turned on the podcast. Did the first five runs & turned around for the trip back for the 6th run. My huffing & puffing is hugely labored, I can’t really make fists because of all the swelling around my joints, & my stretching of my knees is a joke…the left one feels like there’s a wood block behind the knee when I try to bend it backward. What I’m saying is…I ain’t pretty out there, but I’m out there by golly!

The whole walk/run was only an hour. Hoping for a nice 30-minute walk with hubby tonight after dinner, so that’s good. But I didn’t want to overdo on my first day of the new week, so this worked out nicely.

Okay, Hop or Drag? On the way back two guys ran past me, a sort of beefy muscular guy and a sort of lanky thin guy. Lanky guy had a hop to his run…almost made it look like the ground beneath him was soft & bouncy. Beefy guy ran kinda like me, with a bit of a drag, showing all the effort involved. I mention this cause I’m wondering if I’ll always run like the beefy dragger or if I’ll eventually look more like hop-a-long. I’m guessing I’ll always drag.

After our walk, hubby & I came home to a message on the machine from our friends who wanted to take their new (used) boat on a long trip to a lighthouse on Superior. Good times! So I ate a bowl of curry for lunch, showered, & we headed off to the boat.

Got out of the portage, past the breakers & the park where hubby & I got married, & stopped the boat to get the kids (and ourselves) piled into sweatshirts for the long, fast, cold trip up the lake. Everyone ready, everything set, except then the engines wouldn’t start.

& they wouldn’t start & wouldn’t start & wouldn’t start.

So the plan was to wait for them to cool &/or for the generator to charge up the batteries & try again. Finally, we called a friend for a tow. & then we had an hour of just floating on Superior in the sun, drinking a margarita, waiting to be rescued. Lovely. So much better than racing toward a lighthouse & racing back to beat the sunset!

So the rescue arrived & began towing us back to town, which would’ve taken around 3 hours at the rate we were going. Instead, we went for about an hour & towing friend called a friend in Florida to see if we could tie up to his dock. Once at the dock, hubby & friend’s hubby left us with the kids while they took the boat into town to get the cars.

A fun adventure was enjoyed by all involved! Once we were packed up, we called in for pizzas, picked them up & went back to their house for pizza & an evening of cribbage.

So, let’s document the food-bev horrors of yesterday:

Breakfast: smoothie
Lunch: small bowl of tofu curry
Misc throughout the day: one strawberry, 12 Doritos, small handful of m & ms, 2 beers, 2 margaritas, 2 rum & cokes
Dinner: 4 pieces of pizza (don’t panic, this was a round pizza cut into small rectangles…when I put the 4 pieces together, they looked like one medium slice)

Exercise: still got my hour walk in

Update: eh gads! I just realized…no salad?! That means I mistakenly gave myself a food star yesterday when I didn’t earn it. Just deleted it.

Today:

Breakfast out: 2 eggs over medium with 2 small slices of nisu toast
Lunch: salad with HB egg
Dinner: leftover tofu curry
Snack: 3 strawberries & a diet root beer (I hardly ever drink soda since I’m so busy just trying to get my 4 pints of water in every day, but tonight felt like a root beer kinda night).

Exercise: 70-min walk on the beach with hubby & dog. Beautiful night for it & hubby just sent his 5th chapter to his diss director, so it was a nice way to celebrate that victory.